James Hibberd

Sometimes a morning ratings report contains a program title so utterly unfamiliar, so brow-furrowing and spit-take-inducing, you have to Google the show just to make sure it isn’t some spectacular typo.

Such was the case with ABC’s two-hour Monday night special called “Six Degrees of Martina McBride.”

Luckily, the Web search reveals an epic-length ABC News story titled, handily, “What Is ‘Six Degrees of Martina McBride’?” to explain the program is “a new show that combines [a reality] competition with country music and the social theory known as ‘six degrees of separation.’”

The show’s full description is dizzyingly complex and seems to involve contestants stalking, then serenading, a country singer in hopes of getting their song released on iTunes.

ABC News also produces the show, which adds to the weirdness: Why is the network’s news department producing a musical reality show, then running stories about it?

Having recently teased ABC for stocking its Mondays with reality repeats, it’s probably unfair to turn around and mock its reality originals. But … wow …

As for the ratings, “McBride” got a 1.3 among adults 18 to 49, tying an “Age of Love” repeat as the lowest-rated show on the major networks for the night.

Fox won the night with “Hell’s Kitchen” (4.0) and a “Kitchen” repeat.

CBS was second with repeats (including a “Two and a Half Men” that ranked second for the night). NBC was third with an original (2.1) and a repeat of “Age of Love.” ABC was fourth, followed by The CW.

ABC’s “Big Shots” has a coveted time slot coming out of “Grey’s Anatomy” this fall, but it isn’t until after the show’s TCA panel that critics understand why.

The quartet of “Shots” male leads—played by Christopher Titus, Michael Vartan, Josh Malina and Dylan McDermott—have terrific chemistry on stage, if not in the show’s pilot (whose original title was “Big Dicks”—hey, subtle). Despite being slotted as the last panel after weeks of network presentations, when critics are fatigued and irritable, the men charge up the room with their banter (Titus quips he lost 25 pounds after his divorce “because that’s what a soul weighs”).

Funny thing is: Publicists and executives increasingly wonder why they bother doing TCA anymore.

Why spend hundreds of thousands for coverage that can get off-message so easily?

The “Shots” panel—a session that converted skeptical critics to potential fans on a key show—is one reason the TCA remains valuable.

The second reason is bloggers.

Critics used to mainly write full-fledged print-publication stories about TCA. Their stories had to be full-boned stories, encompassing a central theme from the conference, or focusing on a particular show or a controversial issue.

But with many critics coerced into pulling double duty as bloggers, they’re now posting rapid-fire entries about dozens of panels in addition to their print stories. The upside: TCA arguably gets more media coverage than ever before. Panels for anticipated series like “Cavemen” or “Kid Nation” can become significant online news events, with dozens of perspectives linked on hundreds of Web sites. Meanwhile, panels for dull shows that would normally never get any press can garner coverage due to a single off-hand panelist comment.

Granted, the bulk of blog coverage is snarky dispatches about kinda-funny in-the-room minutiae. But the reason some publicists don’t like having bloggers at TCA is the very same reason that blogging makes TCA a unique and valuable opportunity to connect with viewers: Everybody loves to watch a high-wire act.

A three-hour block of Fox comedy repeats ruled Sunday night, with the network posting four of the top five shows.

CBS’s “Big Brother” was the only non-news original of the night, won its 8 p.m. hour and was No. 3 for the night with a 2.4 rating among adults 18 to 49.

CBS and NBC were tied for second place for the evening, followed by ABC and The CW.

This weekend, Fox once again won Saturday with its reality crime block and The CW won its sixth Friday in a row with “Friday Night Smackdown!” (1.4).

Critics ask Shonda Rhimes, showrunner of “Grey’s Anatomy,” what happened when she pitched her “Private Practice” spin-off to ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson over dinner.

Rhimes: "I really like my job, and so I don’t want to tell you what happened in my dinner with Steve".

Critic: “So [McPherson] was not immediately receptive [to the spin-off]?”

Rhimes: "No, he was. It was. I just—I’m scared of Steve.”

Rhimes was presumably terrified to reveal that McPherson spent their entire dinner explaining why Kevin Reilly is a great network president.

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With more than 100 celebrity guests attending ABC’s party at the Beverly Hilton, the hotel’s security detail was given strict orders not to let anybody into the ballroom without an identification badge.

So when a blond man in a burgundy polo shirt and slacks tried to enter the event unescorted, guards were quick to block him.

“Sorry sir, but I can’t let you in without a badge,” the guard says.

“But I’m the president of ABC!” exclaims Steve McPherson.

Now the guards were even more wary.

Later they’d feel terrible about blocking McPherson from his own event. But at the time, one explained, it was tough to believe a young-looking man in a sport shirt was a network president.

To his credit, McPherson laughed it off. He went back down the hall to find a badge.

This blog will continue beyond TCA with television industry news and daily ratings.

Hearty thanks to the following sites, whose links helped make the first two weeks a success: Defamer, TVTattle, AintItCoolNews, TVSquad, Jossip, Digg, TIME’s Tuned In, MSNBC’s Test Pattern, Televisionary and TVBarn.

Fox’s musical-reality double-header continued to dominate Wednesday ratings, despite “So You Think You Can Dance” hitting a season low.

A 90-minute “Dance” was first for the night with a 3.0 followed by “Lyrics” with a 2.8. In the karaoke game show battle between “Lyrics” and NBC’s “The Singing Bee,” the NBC show continues to score higher ratings yet has dropped steadily, while “Lyrics” earns a lower tally but has mostly held its audience.

NBC was second with two of the top four programs, with an on-par “Last Comic Standing” (2.5) and a relatively strong edition of “Dateline” (2.9).

In third place, ABC, with the season finale of “Next Best Thing” (1.9) and “American Inventor” (2.0) matching their lowest ratings of the summer.

CBS and The CW were fourth and fifth with reruns.

ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson criticized newly instated NBC Co-Chair Ben Silverman for shrugging off the firing of former NBC entertainment head Kevin Reilly.

When reporters questioned Silverman last week about Reilly’s ouster from NBC, Silverman said he only just arrived at the company and wasn’t involved in the decision. McPherson, who has been friends with Reilly since they were fraternity brothers in college, was incredulous that Silverman could take such a stance after Reilly championed “The Office” — which Silverman executive produces.

“Kevin Reilly stood up for the ‘The Office’ … made Reveille money … then to stand up [at TCA] and say ‘I just got here …,’” McPherson said. “Be a man.”

McPherson made the comments at TCA during a post-panel huddle with reporters. The executive also expressed irritation that Silverman says he courted “Grey’s Anatomy” actor Isaiah Washington before ABC fired him, noting such a move could be construed as inciting the actor to breech his contract.

"If [Silverman] was talking to him before he was available … he’s either clueless or stupid," McPherson said. “You guys let [Silverman] off the hook … that’s your prerogative,” he said.

The dispute is more than a little unusual since Reilly is now the entertainment president of McPherson's competitor Fox, while Silverman remains executive producer of McPherson's prized breakout hit "Ugly Betty"—which just earned 11 Emmy nominations for ABC.

Top ABC executives are unhappy about McPherson’s comments, sources said, which are effectively dominating the headlines of ABC’s TCA coverage.

UPDATE: NBC insiders defended their new co-chair and depicted McPherson’s attack as self destructive.

“He used his corporate pulpit for his own personal vendetta,” one NBC source said. “What does ABC care about Kevin Reilly? If anything, McPherson should be thanking Silverman up the wazoo for ‘Betty.’”

The source contended McPherson’s comments will alienate Universal Media Studios and Silverman’s former production company, Reveille, in which Silverman still holds a financial stake. “You don’t want to be a buyer scaring off your sellers,” the source said.

As for McPherson’s contention that Silverman inappropriately courted Washington, the NBC insider said: “Everybody in this town talks to everybody, McPherson has done it plenty of times, Ben did nothing that was actionable.”

NBC declined comment.

And just like that, critics switch gears. They love “Pushing Daisies,” charmed by showrunner Bryan Fuller and his likeable cast. The critics embrace the panelists, the panelists hug back. Fuller comes off as prepared, honest and happy to be here.

Fuller says “Daisies” started as a spin-off of his Showtime “Dead Like Me” series and quickly works in his logline into one of his first answers for those who haven’t seen the show: “A guy can touch dead people once and bring them back to life; if he touches them again they go back to being dead; problem is he touches a dead girl, falls in love with her, and can never touch her again.”

Unlike some, Fuller readily confesses his creative influences rather than straining to present every element as his own brilliant creation. “[The music] was definitely inspired by Danny Elfman,” he says, then later: “I can definitely cop to ripping off [the tone of] ‘Amelie.’”

Fuller also quickly addressed a chief critic concern of how to make “Daises” concept work every week: “We’ve embraced the procedural aspect of it in a way that all of our stories come out of a place reflective of where the characters are,” he says. “So we use a procedural story about a whistleblower, but really it’s about all the secrets the characters are keeping from themselves.”

The only thing Fuller might have been wiser to hold back is how he will conclude “Daisies,” which might be the first time a TCA showrunner revealed the probable ending of a series before his first episode has aired. “If [the show] does end, it will probably end with a kiss” between the romantically frustrated protagonists, he says, which would result in the re-death of his female lead.

First “Cavemen” took knocks for not being funny, and now critics are attacking the ABC sitcom for being racially insensitive.

The show is supposed to explore race relations through the trials and tribulations of the cavemen characters, but some critics say the cavemen stereotypes—athleticism, dancing, sexual prowess, laziness, etc.—remind them of one race’s stereotypes in particular. Critics ask the panel if “Cavemen” is actually a show about African Americans.

“We never saw them as a stand-in for any one group,” says executive producer Josh Gordon.

“Is it something we’re aware of?” asked executive producer Mike Schiff. “Yes. Could it be an issue? Yes, but it’s our job to make sure it doesn’t come off that way. If you pick an offensive stereotype of any kind it’s going to bump up into some ethic group, it’s going to happen.”

The critics are skeptical. The panel consists of eight white men. Soon the producers are defensively rattling off the ethnicities of various crew members.

“We have an African-American man, an Indian-American guy, we have an Asian-American writer…”

“Three African American directors…”

“And a Latina...”

After several questions on the topic, Schiff suddenly slams the breaks on the entire “’Cavemen’ as a metaphor for race relations” premise that ABC has touted since first announcing the show (a premise McPherson upheld during his executive session just a couple hours ago).

“Is the show about race relations? No,” Schiff says. “Is that a background to the show? Yes. But it’s not the driving force behind it.”

ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson is dressed entirely in black, sitting on the TCA stage, before a large wall of deep red screens.

Those familiar with McPherson’s temper might see this as a fittingly devilish visual. But the way critics abruptly turn hostile over ABC withholding a single bit of spectacularly minor “Lost” news, the setting is more appropriate to depict McPherson as having a hellacious TCA experience.

Things start out fine. McPherson touted coming off a season with two of the three biggest break-out new shows (“Ugly Betty,” “Brothers and Sisters”). “We feel really good about where we ended up,” he says.

Critics ask about ABC’s summer strategy (the network is running in fourth place right now). McPherson says next summer the network will try to stock its lineup with scripted drama and comedy.

McPherson confirmed formerly hot pilots “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and “Football Wives” are dead. He touts the amount of online interest in “National Bingo Night” that prompted its renewal.

McPherson also defends the “Pushing Daises” time period, a show critics are concerned will get overlooked in its 8 p.m. Wednesday slot. “[Daises] doesn’t fit neatly behind any show because of its originality,” he says. “It’s a family show. … We think it’s a good anchor for the night.”

Several critics mention “Cavemen,” asking whether the cavemen-as-ethic-minority angle is the best way to adapt the Geico ads. “The commercials are a one-joke thing,” McPherson says. “The nature of this series is to explore a group that is a minority and all the things and stereotypes that go along with that. If you just did the commercials on a 30- minute basis, that wouldn’t work.”

The trouble starts when a critic asks about a rumored announcement that ABC is planning regarding “Lost” tomorrow at Comic-Con and McPherson declines to reveal the news.

“They do have some announcements they are going to be making that I think everyone will be pretty excited about,” McPherson says.

Which seems like a perfectly acceptable response. But then the Star Jones Effect kicks in. Just like when Jones declared she was holding back a piece of news for a future venue, critics are quickly incensed that ABC seems to regard a convention of comic-book fans as more important than themselves. Fueling the fire is the fact that, unlike other broadcasters, ABC doesn’t have any TCA announcements, so this mysterious news nugget feels highly valuable.

“Do you want us to go to Comic-Con tomorrow instead of this session?” a critic asks.

McPherson tries to joke it off. “Let’s go now. You want to go?”

Questions move on to other topics, then quickly circle back: “I don’t think my editor is going to be very happy when she reads on a blog later this afternoon that Steve McPherson promised that the biggest news regarding one of the highest-rated shows on the network would be coming at a fan convention the next day,” a critic says.

Then another: “Not to be a crybaby … [but] what’s the point of having 150 reporters with access with millions of readers sitting here?”

Again, McPherson tries for a joke. “OK, I’ll give you the announcement … I cast Don Imus on ‘Lost.’”

Few are amused. Yet another critic: “This is a serious question. Newspapers spend a lot of money to get us out here. A lot of us are fighting to stay out here. We write about all your television shows. If you are not going to tell us what it is, you can at least tell us why you’re not telling us.”

McPherson: “Comic-Con has been a place that ‘Lost’ has had its presence for a long time. They have an announcement that [showrunner Damon Lindelof] wanted to make at Comic-Con. … It’s not earth-shattering. … It’s not going to change the face of television.”

Suddenly ABC publicity executive Hope Hartman crosses the stage and whispers to McPherson. The room goes quiet.

McPherson says: “All right. They just spoke to Damon. From the fury that we had … it is going to be announced that Harold Perrineau is returning to the show.”

The air goes out of the room. That’s it?

NBC came in first place Tuesday night, but it’s tough to declare any network a winner due to key reality efforts draining viewers.

NBC’s “The Singing Bee” and “America’s Got Talent” were the top two shows, but hit season lows (3.1 for “Bee,” 2.9 for “Talent.”)

CBS came in second, but “Big Brother 8” declined to 2.6 this week. CBS canceled “Pirate Master” this week and replaced it with a repeat of “48 Hours,” which fared better (2.1).

ABC’s reality block came in third with back-to-back episodes of “Just for Laughs” (2.2 and 2.7) coming in second place for the hour, but both dipped from last week’s premiere. ”). “Shaq’s Big Challenge” (1.9) was on par with last week followed by “Primetime: Family Secrets” (1.8).

Fourth-place Fox had another edition of “On the Lot” (0.9) and The CW had repeats.

Here’s an exercise: Close your eyes. Forget the Geico cavemen commercials have ever existed. We live in a world without Geico cavemen commercials. Good. Now, pretend the “Cavemen” concept was created by some geek in Austin who shot some funny low-budget videos featuring his friends in cavemen makeup and put them on his Web site. Now pretend that Comedy Central—not ABC—picked up this Internet phenomena and developed it into a sitcom, put it on at 11 p.m. Tuesdays with little fanfare.

Open your eyes. Do you still hate the show?

The point isn’t that ABC’s “Cavemen” is a funny pilot (oh, dear lord, it’s not). The point is that the critical and online mockery endured by “Cavemen” (whose TCA panel is tomorrow) has less to do with the idea than its backstory. It’s the icky feeling that “Cavemen” is a Madison Avenue product, a piece of corporate art designed to sell auto insurance that was co-opted by a big broadcast network desperately seeking a headline-grabbing sitcom, that makes it objectionable.

As a grungy homegrown effort on Comedy Central, “Cavemen” could have been a bizarre cult favorite—a programming move made by zeitgeist-Googling network executives and marketed to the same demographic of college hipsters who get stoned and watch MTV2’s ‘Wondershozen.”

On ABC, it’s an easy target.

The first interesting thing about The CW’s “Reaper” is how weirdly similar it is to NBC’s “Chuck.”

The two shows have wildly different loglines (“Reaper” about a slacker whose parents sold his soul and has to work as the devil’s bounty hunter to pay off his debt; “Chuck” about a computer geek with government secrets downloaded into his brain).

But both are dramedies following an underachieving twenty-something guy with a zany best friend working in a big box department store who gains an extraordinary ability and is co-opted into fighting evil for a mysterious organization.

Both pilots are also, surprisingly, good (and, until last week when Ben Silverman played switcheroo with NBC’s fall schedule, shared the same timeslot).

“I've seen it,” “Reaper” executive producer Mark Gordon says of “Chuck.” “Our show is better.”

Gordon is right. While “Chuck” is likeable in the glossy, snappily edited style of executive producer McG, “Reaper” is scrappy and subversive in the style of its pilot director, Kevin Smith. Critics at TCA like “Chuck,” but voted “Reaper” the second best pilot of the fall.

“Chuck,” however, feels more likely to be a ratings success. In addition to being on NBC’s Monday night lineup rather than Tuesdays on The CW, “Chuck” stars the female-demo-siphoning Zachary Levi—an actor who plays geeky the way Anne Hathaway plays ugly (which is to say: not very convincingly due to genetics).

The second interesting thing about “Reaper” is who produces it: ABC Studios, which means mothership ABC had first dibs to pick it up. Nobody knows if “Reaper” will be a hit, but it’s miles funnier than “Cavemen.”

The best reason for ABC to shrug off “Reaper” is its concept is hugely off brand for the network—it likely will skew male and younger than most ABC programming. But really: Would gaining a few young males really hurt the estrogen-drenched network? ABC has been looking for a light-tone, one-hour show to follow “Lost” and this could have been it.

Fox had its best Monday night all summer with the unscripted double-header of “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader” and “Hell’s Kitchen,” which were the highest-rated shows of the night.

“Grader” was a special airing that boosted Fox’s overall average and gave “Kitchen” a stronger lead-in than last week’s repeat. “Kitchen” earned a 4.1. rating among adults 18 to 49.

CBS was second with repeats. NBC had a slice of good news, with “Age of Love” having its best performance in a month (2.2), though only third-best overall. ABC was fourth with the CMA Music Festival getting a 1.9, on par with last year.

Drew Carey has accepted CBS’s offer to replace Bob Barker as the new host of “The Price Is Right.”

The actor-comedian made the announcement while taping CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman.”

“Honestly, it was like 15 minutes ago, [my agents] called me, it’s a done deal,” Carey said on “Letterman.” “I’m the new host of ‘The Price Is Right.’”

Carey was offered the position after CBS saw his hosting skills in its upcoming prime-time game show “Power of 10.”

Earlier this week at TCA, Carey expressed his enthusiasm about the coveted job.

“All I’m doing is giving away prizes,” he said. “And it’s not even my money. Oprah gets to say, ‘You get a car, you get a car,’ and she gets all the credit. That would be me.”

Carey won the spot over a long list of candidates, including “Entertainment Tonight” co-anchor Mark Steines, reality host Mark Walberg, former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell and GSN game show host Todd Newton.

CBS was under the gun to find a replacement for the legendary Barker.“Price” is usually in production by now for its September season premiere. Carey will run through a couple of weeks of rehearsal shoots to learn the 77 “Price” games.

Carey’s fans tend to skew slightly more male than the typical “Price” audience. Viewers of the final season of his sitcom averaged 55 percent female, while “Price” is about 63 percent female. But given Carey’s track record for drawing an audience and level of celebirty appeal, he should have little trouble drawing viewers.

TVWeek was the first media outlet to report the news of Carey’s hire, just as he was announcing it during his “Letterman” taping earlier today.

CBS had no comment.

Last updated at 3:33 pm.

Gearing up for “The Simpsons Movie,” Fox scheduled a two-hour block of repeats on Sunday and won the night. Over on CBS, “Big Brother 8” tied a repeat of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” to win the hour with a 2.4 rating among adults 18 to 49, but dipped from its most recent airing last Thursday. The rest of the night was tepid repeat-on-repeat action. Fox also won Saturday with its reality-crime block.

On Friday, ABC’s new game show “Set For Life” came in third for the hour with a 1.1 rating, followed by “Greek” (0.8) which fell 20 percent from last Friday’s debut and was the lowest-rated show of the night. At 10 p.m., however, ABC’s “20/20” was the top-rated program of the night.

Fox’s “Standoff” had its season (and presumably series) finale with a 1.0 rating, while The CW continued to perform well with “Friday Night Smackdown!” Repeats filled out the rest of the night.

Every showrunner fears lawsuits (or, worse, looking like a hack) so seldom do TCA panelists admit to watching the obvious forerunners of their new show’s genre. David Manson and Allan Loeb, executive producers of the immortal-detective Fox drama “New Amsterdam,” for example, professed ignorance of VHS-rental classic “Highlander,” which for a couple critics was too shocking to contemplate.

Q: “Pete Hamill wrote a book called ‘Forever’ … when I first saw the … the pilot, my first thought was, my God, it’s ‘Forever.’”

Manson: “I’ve never read the Pete Hamill book … it’s not surprising that there will be overlaps in this world. That’s about all I can say.”

Q: “Have you folks seen ‘Highlander’? And can you comment on the similarities and differences?”

Manson: “I’ve actually never seen ‘Highlander.’”

Loeb: “I’ve never seen ‘Highlander.’”

Q: “I find that hard to believe. It has a great fan following, still does today. I find it a bit surprising you’ve never seen it.”

Lobe: “I’ve never seen it.”

Mason: “I’ve never seen it.”

Q: “I was just curious why you said you hadn’t seen it.”

Mason: “I’d be happy to tell you had I seen it, but I haven’t.”